Do not stay here. You will not sleep.
This was only my second Airbnb. I stayed at another on Soi 13, about 200 meters away. It was a fabulous experience, but I was unable to extend my stay because someone else had rented it. This property was an absolute nightmare.
I heard from both owners, Pascal and Berry. I was told someone named Fern (I will not grant her the honorific) would meet me. She didn't. Berry said most Airbnbs have self check in, but this wasn't other Airbnbs. It was theirs, and I was told someone would meet me, but none of the three could be bothered.
I was told to go to the apartment, where the cleaners (!!) would meet me. To get to the apartment you walk down a long hallway, go past the first security desk, go around the corner and take the elevator to the 14th floor. You exit the elevator, go up two short sets of stairs past the second security desk, go down another hallway, then go through glass doors into an office for... something. At the third security desk you need a badge to open the doors. I did not have a badge, because no one had met me. The security guard let me through. Here I should note that there are signs up reminding residents that renting apartments weekly or monthly is illegal. Thankfully none of the security guards care.
After the guard opened the door for me, I then took another elevator up one floor. From there, you walk around the corner to the apartment. There were two cleaners there, lovely ladies, but they speak no English and I speak no Thai. The door doesn't use a key, like all the other apartments in the building. It uses a key card, which requires a code. That took a couple of tries. And so, no one was there to guide me through a process that was like something out of a John le Carre novel. Berry told me it was all in the book-lengthy email she had sent me. But I didn't have the email handy because, again, someone was supposed to have been there to greet me.
Once inside I got a sick feeling in my stomach. The reviews said the place was old, but it's dingy and shabby and depressing, like the rest of the building. It reminded me of a hostel I stayed in while in Moscow, which was in a repurposed brutalist apartment building from the Soviet era. I don't know what the cleaners actually did. Clean the floors? Who knows. There were grease stains on the kitchen table and all shelves were dusty. The sofa is covered in cloth in a garish giraffe-skin print, and it was covered in dust. I wouldn't even sit on it unless I used a towel, and usually I sat in one of the kitchen chairs. Has the sofa ever been cleaned? I doubt it. So immediately upon moving in I had to clean the place before unpacking.
One thing I filtered for when searching for an apartment was a washing machine. I prefer to do my own laundry. The apartment does not have a washing machine, despite what it says in the advertisement. I messaged Berry about this, and she was quite rude. You see, there are laundry shops in the building where you can PAY them to wash your clothes. You know, just like everywhere else in the world. This is not a "lost in translation" misunderstanding. It's a deliberate lie. Pascal quickly responded to offer me a voucher to do laundry, which would indicate that he's had this problem before and chose to let it continue. It's the equivalent of saying the place has a pool, but you have to go to another building and pay to use it.
The duvet is too small for the bed, so I had to sleep with it at a diagonal to keep my feet from poking out. and isn't really a duvet. The inside is sort of a synthetic blanket. Not comfortable at all.
There is a construction site next door, and I mean literally 10 meters away across the alley. They start at 7 am and would sometimes put out lights so they could continue until after 9 pm. At that point the music on Soi 11 is roaring. I'm pretty sure the main offender is a club called Hemingway's, but now that covid restrictions are slipping away it would be loud enough to rattle the windows at 1 am. (You'd think the local businesses, apartment complexes, hotels, etc. would join forces to do something about this.) And then there's the bird. I read reviews about the bird. But I grew up in a rural community, and I fondly remember waking up to birdsong. I'm an avid hiker and camper. The Ambassador Hotel has a "Bird Oasis," basically a jail cell the size of a classroom where they keep a bird that is so loud it is quite literally unbelievable. It sounds like something out of Jurassic Park. I could hear it over the vacuum cleaner. I could hear it in the shower. And I could hear it when it started squawking at 7 am. If you stay here you will not get a minute's peace. It is nonstop cacophony.
I used the noise as an excuse to get away for a few days. I went to Pattaya. I came back to the pterodactyl waking me up. I went to Phuket. I came back to more sleepless nights. I realized I was paying for an apartment but was using it for luggage storage, which was silly. I was able to move back into the previous Airbnb, where it is as quiet as a tomb. Let me be clear about this: It was worth losing about $500 in rental fees to NOT stay in this apartment.